apostolakisl Posted March 17, 2018 Posted March 17, 2018 I have two buildings running on the same ISY. Building two only has thermostats, so all radio. To get the radio feed over there, I basically ran a long extension cord to the other building (not actually what I did but for the sake or this discussion works) and put a lamplinc at the end of it. All worked well for many months. Then I started having com issues with the thermostats. Sometimes it worked perfectly and other times like crap. I first assumed RF noise. But nothing was new. Then I noticed that if I manually changed a thermostat, ISY knew right away. But if I tried to get com going the other way, no luck. Finally, it occurred to me that perhaps the radio on the switchlinc was weak or dying. I switched out with a Insteon hub I happened to have sitting around and "boom", all worked great. In fact super great. The delay now between a query and answer is super fast. In short, the radios on these things may (probably) aren't the best. Of course it has hard to know if any one device is good or bad since you typically have so many of them overlapping. It would be nice if there were a simple way to test.
larryllix Posted March 17, 2018 Posted March 17, 2018 How is the hub configured or do you just power it up and it acts as a repeater / bridge from powerline to RF? This scares me as it makes me wonder if SH had cheap PS cap years for all their devices. If so many of us are in trouble.
apostolakisl Posted March 17, 2018 Author Posted March 17, 2018 2 hours ago, larryllix said: How is the hub configured or do you just power it up and it acts as a repeater / bridge from powerline to RF? This scares me as it makes me wonder if SH had cheap PS cap years for all their devices. If so many of us are in trouble. The hub is just plugged into power. Not linked to anything. In short, I'm just using it as a PLC to radio/radio to PLC repeater. Also, just to be clear, the lamplinc responded perfectly to the plc com running down the "extension cord" from the ISY in the other building. And I have no idea what particular part in the lamplinc that has made the radio fail. I can tell you I also have a plm in which the radio failed. This particular plm had the power supply fail, I replaced the caps (3 of them if I recall) which got the plm up and running. This plm was originally in the primary building with the ISY and again, only had thermostats, and none of the thermostats could "hear" it. This wasn't flakey, it just wouldn't work at all. The PLC part worked fine. Replaced the plm with a new one and all worked fine.
Brian H Posted March 17, 2018 Posted March 17, 2018 4 hours ago, larryllix said: How is the hub configured or do you just power it up and it acts as a repeater / bridge from powerline to RF? This scares me as it makes me wonder if SH had cheap PS cap years for all their devices. If so many of us are in trouble. The Internal Photos in the FCC Database. Shows the same LNK354 switching supply IC in both the 2457D2 Lamplinc and the 2245-222 HUB. LKN306 in the older 2242-222 HUB. I suspect all the modules may have the same questionable capacitors in them. In the Insteon.com Forums. I have seen reports of the HUBs failing and users changing a capacitor to get it back working. There was also some photos of a late and earlier date code 2245-222 HUB with dfferent capacitors and PCB layout.
larryllix Posted March 17, 2018 Posted March 17, 2018 2 hours ago, apostolakisl said: The hub is just plugged into power. Not linked to anything. In short, I'm just using it as a PLC to radio/radio to PLC repeater. Also, just to be clear, the lamplinc responded perfectly to the plc com running down the "extension cord" from the ISY in the other building. And I have no idea what particular part in the lamplinc that has made the radio fail. I can tell you I also have a plm in which the radio failed. This particular plm had the power supply fail, I replaced the caps (3 of them if I recall) which got the plm up and running. This plm was originally in the primary building with the ISY and again, only had thermostats, and none of the thermostats could "hear" it. This wasn't flakey, it just wouldn't work at all. The PLC part worked fine. Replaced the plm with a new one and all worked fine. I just observed that the powerline portion was the part that talked to your PLM/ISY and worked fine but the RF portion didn't work to the remote devices. Interesting.
ELA Posted March 18, 2018 Posted March 18, 2018 Hello apostolakisl How long was your "extension cord" between buildings? Do you only have a single PLC device at the remote building (the lamplinc) vs. how many PLC devices at the main building? How can one exclude the possibility that the Hubs PLC receiver might be more sensitive than the lamplincs? Not saying that the Lamplincs RF transmitter isnt weak, just posing questions to better understand. Was the Hub placed at the very same height and orientation as the lamplinc was? Lots of variables making it difficult to know for sure without testing data. There is a relatively easy method to test RF signal strength provided a person is willing to modify a spare PLM for testing purposes. If you are interested I can dig up the details and share them.
apostolakisl Posted March 18, 2018 Author Posted March 18, 2018 The lamplinc worked fine for 6 months, then started failing. Nothing changed, between the time it worked and the time it started failing. A hub placed in the same exact spot works perfectly immediately after swapping out with the lamplinc. The length of wire is maybe 150 feet. But is not relevant since PLC com over the wire works perfectly. In other words, the lamplinc itself responds perfectly 100% of the time both transmit and receive over that wire. It is only the re-broadcast from the lamplinc to rf that is failing. ISY --plc--> lamplinc --rf--> thermostat = fail thermostat --rf--> lamplinc --plc--> ISY = success ISY <--plc--> lamplinc = success ISY <--plc--> Hub <--rf--> thermostat = success The only reasonable conclusion is that the radio in the lamplinc is failing.
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